Audiopile Review: Newest transmission from the seemingly bottomless Gothenburg scene, once again courtesy of Discreet, the centre of the city’s experimental hub. This time they’ve issued a debut release from the mysterious Eftergift, whose personnel haven’t been named here, so we suppose they COULD be part of the rotating cast of usual suspects that Discreet has been intimately involved with. As is the case for much of what we hear from Gothenburg, its of the home-fi industrial, grab-whatever-instrument-is-at-hand aesthetic that we’re accustomed to hearing from the likes of Blod, Sewer Election or Arv & Miljö. With a heavy use of tape across Vatten Över Vatten (Water Over Water), the physically manipulated recording of synths, drum machines, guitar and other unidentifiable stringed instruments have that submerged, warbled, and lost in time quality that we’ve always been suckers for. Landing somewhere between the tactile concrète of Can or the post-industrial landscape soundtracking of the Hanson/American Tapes scene of a decade+ back, Eftergift’s rustic loops and intimate shuttered-room fidelity make for more inviting listening than you’d expect. Another essential grip from Discreet, but don’t dawdle, this is pressed in an edition of 300 and we only have a few on hand. Ordered direct from the label in Sweden.

Vatten Över Vatten (‘Water Over Water’) is the debut album by the Gothenburg-based act Eftergift. Heavily influenced by the Nordic nature, this is beautiful organic tape music that utilizes a range of different instruments over the course of 8 songs. Sort of the musical equivalent to slowly walking on foggy Swedish fields in the summer dawn. While comparisons could be made with the early Korea Undok Group transmissions or someone like Mattias Gustafsson when it comes to working with the magnetic tape and letting it become an integral part of the soundscape, the rugged lo-fi brilliance and homebrewed ambient of Eftergift is firmly rooted in its own vision and weirdly musical in all it’s fucked up 4-track glory.